Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The purpose of this bill is to amend relevant fisheries legislation to provide for custodial penalties for foreign fishing offences in Australia’s territorial sea.

This measure should be welcomed by all who are affected adversely by illegal foreign fishing—governments, industry, non-government groups and individual people and, not least of all, fishermen themselves—all of whom wish to preserve and protect Australia’s ecologically unique and economically important fish stocks and other living marine resources.

At present Australia’s main fisheries legislation, the Fisheries Management Act 1991 and the Torres Strait Fisheries Act 1984, do provide for custodial sentences only for some specific ‘secondary’ offences, whether committed on board an Australian or foreign boat, such as for failure to comply with certain court orders, falsification of information, or obstructing a fisheries officer.

However, the legislation does not currently provide for custodial penalties for the ‘primary’ foreign fishing offences of fishing illegally from a foreign fishing boat, or being in control of a foreign fishing boat without legal excuse, in our waters.

The bill addresses this issue to the extent possible consistent with international law and the current jurisdictional arrangements for fisheries management as between the Commonwealth and the states and the Northern Territory.

Illegal foreign vessel incursions threaten Australia’s sovereign interests. They pose a range of threats, such as serious quarantine risks, illegal immigration, importation of prohibited goods and drugs, depletion of fish stocks, degradation of marine protected areas and the targeting of endangered species.

The government has committed very substantial resources to address and reduce these risks, including the additional $388.9 million package to combat illegal foreign fishing announced on budget night.

The custodial penalties proposed in the current bill would be a significant additional deterrent to illegal foreign fishing vessel incursions.

The key feature of the bill is that it would provide for custodial penalties of from two years to three years, depending on the specific offence, together with substantial fines. The terms of imprisonment proposed would be broadly consistent with the terms for the existing ‘secondary’ offences in Commonwealth fisheries law and with the terms of imprisonment in some states for similar ‘primary’ foreign fishing offences in their coastal waters.

In deciding the lengths of the new Commonwealth custodial penalties regard has, however, also been had to the inherent sovereignty violation in foreign fishing boat incursions, giving rise to more substantial penalties than would otherwise have been considered appropriate.

Illegal foreign fishing harms the interests of the states and the Northern Territory as well as the Commonwealth and the need for an effective response by all governments is clear. Commonwealth-state consultations on a more coordinated strategy are continuing. Among other things, these discussions may in time result in a more seamless approach across all jurisdictions.

In order to put in place a system of custodial penalties as a matter of urgency, the bill provides for the penalties, at this stage, to operate in those parts of Australia’s territorial sea that are subject to Commonwealth fisheries jurisdiction and not in the coastal or internal waters of the states or the Northern Territory.

Accordingly, the custodial penalties proposed in the bill would operate generally in the band of water that begins three nautical miles seaward of the coastline and extends to 12 nautical miles from the coast. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea prohibits the imposition of custodial penalties for foreign fishing offences beyond the 12 nautical mile territorial sea limit.

Importantly, also, consistent with the Commonwealth’s well established principles of criminal justice, the bill would ensure that the custodial penalties are associated only with new fault based indictable offences and would not be applied to any of the strict liability offences in the existing fisheries laws of the Commonwealth.

The custodial penalties in the bill, if enacted, will strengthen the government’s overall policy responses to illegal foreign fishing. Taken alone, they will not provide a total ‘answer’ to this complex matter, but they will represent an important new element in the government’s ongoing action to protect Australia’s sovereignty and its fish stocks and other living marine resources.

The penalties for foreign fishing offences in this bill are amongst the most stringent in the world. They further demonstrate Australia’s commitment to combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Gavan O’Connor) adjourned.